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We should farm and eat endangered species to save them. That's the only way of incorporating endangered species into our economic system. We can export wolf mea

We should farm and eat endangered species to save them. That's the only way of incorporating endangered species into our economic system. We can export wolf meat to the Chinese. Imagine a chain of restaurants selling endangered meat because of the ecological benefits of eating organic AAA grass-fed endangered meat and maybe it's even low in saturated fat as a bonus.

beaconstudios 8y ago
that would help to prevent the animals from going extinct but it wouldn't replace the ecological effect that the wild animals had. Having a wolf farm (to the extent you could even domesticate them) would not help with the deer population explosion from lack of wolves.
pvaldes 8y ago
Lets suppose that our endangered species is a screw. Just a normal screw. The cheapest one. We could mass produce screws, coate it with gold and put them under a glass bell in our main hall. This would assure that everybody knows what kind of screws we had in the past, but they are just curious useless pieces of metal at that state. The real problem is that this screw was doing something in a bigger machine, and if we remove random pieces in a machine there is a fair possibility that the entire system will crash until we return all the pieces again in its correct place. But ecosystems aren't your common kind of machine. They are alive flexible machines and they will try to regenerate aiming for the next lower point of equilibrium available, much like a rock falling a few meters from a mountainside. Having lost a part of its "potential energy", the machine will start producing different things. Typically fewer and of lesser value, often noxious or defective products: They could start producing fireforests, dust storms and thorns por example instead water, fruit and wood. Ecosystems don't care. Even worse, at this point there aren't more slots that could fit again our screw. The machine has mutated and will spit its former spare-parts. Can't be reversed unless you burn huge lots of money and invest thousands of years on it. If you find that the new situation is bad for you (as often is), you are screwed for the rest of your life, and also your sons and grandsons.

beaconstudios 8y ago

that would help to prevent the animals from going extinct but it wouldn't replace the ecological effect that the wild animals had. Having a wolf farm (to the extent you could even domesticate them) would not help with the deer population explosion from lack of wolves.

pvaldes 8y ago

Lets suppose that our endangered species is a screw. Just a normal screw. The cheapest one. We could mass produce screws, coate it with gold and put them under a glass bell in our main hall. This would assure that everybody knows what kind of screws we had in the past, but they are just curious useless pieces of metal at that state. The real problem is that this screw was doing something in a bigger machine, and if we remove random pieces in a machine there is a fair possibility that the entire system will crash until we return all the pieces again in its correct place. But ecosystems aren't your common kind of machine. They are alive flexible machines and they will try to regenerate aiming for the next lower point of equilibrium available, much like a rock falling a few meters from a mountainside. Having lost a part of its "potential energy", the machine will start producing different things. Typically fewer and of lesser value, often noxious or defective products: They could start producing fireforests, dust storms and thorns por example instead water, fruit and wood. Ecosystems don't care. Even worse, at this point there aren't more slots that could fit again our screw. The machine has mutated and will spit its former spare-parts. Can't be reversed unless you burn huge lots of money and invest thousands of years on it. If you find that the new situation is bad for you (as often is), you are screwed for the rest of your life, and also your sons and grandsons.